The Merrihew Murder.

Charles B. Merrihew became violently ill in May 1879 at his home in Lowville, New York, and was being nursed by his wife, Harriet. They sent for his physician, Dr. Turner, and while waiting for his arrival, Harriet confessed to Charles that she had been poisoning him. Though she refused to repeat her confession to Dr. Thomas, he quickly confirmed that Charles had taken poison. He was able to induce vomiting and save Charles's life. 

The marriage was not a happy one. It was alleged that Charles was having an adulterous relationship with Maria Sheldon. Harriet also had a lover outside of her marriage.

The poisoning incident raised questions about the death of Charles’s brother David two months earlier. David, who was living with Charles and Harriet, suddenly became violently ill and died in their house. At the time, congestion of the lungs was given as the cause of death. After the attempted poisoning of Charles, the authorities exhumed David’s body and performed a thorough post-mortem examination. Doctors determined that David had died of arsenic poisoning. After a coroner’s inquest, Harriet Merrihew was charged with the murder of David Merrihew. She was arrested and taken to jail in Lowville.

The Mysterious Murder of Rose Clark Ambler.

 

Rose Ambler said goodnight to her fiancé at the Raven Stream Bridge in Stratford, Connecticut on the night of September 2, 1883, and started walking home alone as she usually did. She was never again seen alive. Her body was found the next day, beaten and stabbed, and the perpetrator was never captured. Rose Ambler joined Mary Stannard and Jennie Cramer in the growing list of unpunished Connecticut murders.

Read the full story here: The Raven Stream Crime.

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Picture from Illustrated Police News, September 22, 1883.

The Banjo Homicide.

William Condon was a banjo player and a variety performer at Ryan’s Saloon in Cincinnati. For six months, he had been living with a woman named Lou Perry, and in June 1880, they moved into a rented room at No.300 West Fifth Street. The move had not gone smoothly, and they began quarreling frequently.

Lou Perry—known as “Big Lou”—was from a troubled family. Her real name was Louisa Dorff, and she was born in West Virginia. Around 1870, the family moved to Cincinnati, where her two brothers, Charles and Samuel, got into trouble and were sent to the penitentiary. When they returned from prison, they got into trouble again, and the family was driven out of the city. Lou stayed behind.

The Illustrated Police News politely referred to Lou as a “kept woman.” The Cincinnati Daily Star was a bit harsher: “She went from bad to worse and finally became a low, miserable, besotted prostitute.”

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The Meierhoffer Execution.

On January 6, 1881, Mrs. Margaret Meierhoffer and her alleged paramour, Frank Lamens, were hanged in Newark, New Jersey, for the murder of Margaret’s husband, John. Two years earlier, the Meierhoffers hired Lamens to work on their farm, but Lamens’s presence put further strain on their already troubled marriage. John was dissatisfied with Lamens's work and wanted him gone, but Margaret insisted that he stay.

On October 9, 1879, the police found John Meierhoffer’s body at the foot of the cellar stairs with a gunshot wound in his throat. Upstairs they found Margaret Meierhoffer in bed with Frank Lamens. Neither confessed to the murder; they each accused the other. The state found them both guilty and sentenced them to death.

The illustration is incorrect. The New Jersey gallows was not configured to hang two at a time. Margaret was launched into eternity at 10:25, an hour later Frank Lammens followed her.

Read the full story here: Who Shot Meierhoffer?

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Picture from Illustrated Police News, January 15, 1881.

A Naked Man’s Horrible Deeds.

 

Thomas Ryan, aged 88, lived in Chester, Illinois, with his widowed daughter, Julia Smith, her 12-year-old daughter Sallie, and 8-year-old son Arthur. On December 7, 1880, their peaceful morning was shattered when an intruder burst into the house.  It was a naked man wielding an axe who ordered them all to kneel and pray as they only had a few minutes to live.

"The Boy Murderer."

Myron Buel.
“He possesses an expressionless and almost
idiotic countenance.”  Illustrated Police News.

Myron Buel was called “The Boy Murderer,” though he was 20 years old when he committed the crime. He was charged with the murder of Catherine Richards in Plainfield, New York, on June 25, 1878. The following February he was tried and convicted of first-degree murder.

Buel continued to profess innocence while his attorneys appealed the verdict. His motion for a new trial was denied, and the governor refused to grant a reprieve. Three days before his execution, Buel confessed. He was in love with Catherine, the 14-year-old daughter of his employer. Her rejections angered him so much that he lured Catherine into the barn and then threw a rope around her neck. He beat her to death with a milking stool, then ravished her.

Myron Buel was hanged on November 14, 1879.

Read the full story here: The Confessions of Myron Buel.

The Stull-Best Murder.

On the evening of Saturday, November 9, 1878, Mrs. Amy Best left her home to visit her grandchildren, just a short walk away from her home in Port Washington, Ohio. She never reached her destination. The next day, friends and family made a diligent search of the area and found the body of Mrs. Best at the edge of the woods, near a fence. Her neck was broken, and her skull was crushed. Bruises on her neck indicated that she had been strangled.

The prime suspect in Amy Best’s murder quickly became Mrs. Catherine Stull. Though Amy Best was a 60-year-old widowed grandmother, Mrs. Stull believed she had been having intimate relations with her husband, John Stull, for the past fifteen years. Because of her husband’s infidelity, Mrs. Stull “had endured discord at home and scandal abroad.” She had openly declared that if she ever caught them together, she would kill them both.

Poisoning Mania.

 

Elizabeth Wharton, in custody, en route to trial in Annapolis.

In June 1871, General William Scott Ketchum became ill while a houseguest of Mrs. Elizabeth G. Wharton, a pillar of Baltimore society. As the general lay dying, a second houseguest, Eugene Van Ness, became violently ill. When General Ketchum died, the police determined that he had been poisoned and they arrested Elizabeth Wharton before she could leave on a planned trip to Europe. Her motive, they believed, was to avoid paying a debt she owed Ketchum, but when four other members of her household died mysteriously, she was accused of having “poisoning mania.” Her attorneys asserted that she could not get a fair trial in Baltimore, so she was tried for murder in Annapolis. 

Read the Full Story Here: A Baltimore Borgia.

The Confessions of Edward Tatro.

Charles Butler, aged 25, owned a farm two miles north of Highgate Centre, Vermont, eleven miles from St. Albans. He lived there with his lovely 21-year-old wife Alice. Also in the household were Charles’s elderly father and Edward Tatro, a 20-year-old French-Canadian farmhand.

Charles had to go to Highgate Centre on June 6, 1876, and he asked Alice to join him. She declined, saying she felt ill and planned to go to bed. Charles’s father was away visiting friends that evening, so Tatro said he would stay and take care of Alice. Charles left home at about 7:00.

He returned at about 10:00 and put his horse in the barn. As he approached the house, he was surprised to see no lights. Charles entered the dark kitchen, and as he looked for a match, he stumbled over something lying on the floor. He was shocked to see what it was.

“He lighted the match, and there met his sight the lifeless remains of his lovely wife in a pool of blood, in the most mutilated condition,” said the St. Albans Daily Messenger, “her head beaten almost to a pumice, and her brains oozing out on to the floor.”

Ann and John.

Mrs. Ann E. Freese ran a brothel in a section of Rutland, Vermont, known as the “Swamp.” On June 9, 1874, the house burned to the ground. Amid the rubble was the body of Mrs. Freese, badly burned but recognizable. She had been stabbed several times in the throat before the fire started. The investigation proved daunting with so many anonymous men coming and going from the house, but one man stood out. John Phair, a known associate of Freese, left town around the time of the fire. When he was identified as the man who pawned her jewelry in several Boston pawnshops, Phair was arrested. He was convicted of first-degree murder and hanged in 1879, professing innocence to the end.

Read the full story here: Fire in the Swamp.

A Mysterious Tragedy.

Dr. Henry Clark of Boston was summoned to 11 Hamilton Place at around 7:00 the morning of December 30, 1879. A woman had been shot and needed urgent care. When he got there, she was nearly gone, and there was nothing he could do. 

A policeman and a medical examiner arrived soon after and determined that the woman, Mrs. Helen J. Ward, had been shot twice in the head. One shot entered her temple and went through her head, the other fractured her skull without entering. 

Her 18-year-old daughter, also named Helen, did her best to explain what happened. Mother and daughter shared a bed. They worried about burglars, so they kept a revolver on a chair beside the bed. Miss Ward believed she had been in a somnambulant state and fired at a moving object that she thought was a burglar. Alternatively, she thought the gun may have discharged accidentally. This took place around 4:00 am, raising the question of why she didn’t contact someone sooner. Miss Ward was considered cold and unfeeling because she did not seem overly affected by her mother’s death.

Horrible Beyond Precedent.

In 1872, George Wheeler married May Tilson in Boston. He soon fell in love with May’s younger sister, Delia, and they began an intimate relationship. In 1880 George and Delia were living together in San Francisco. There, Delia began a relationship with another man, and Wheeler declared he would rather see her dead than with another lover. According to Wheeler, Delia felt so conflicted and disgraced that she agreed with him and begged him to cut her throat. Instead, he strangled Delia and hid her body in a trunk.

Read the full story here: "Thus She Passed Away."

Image from "Horrible Beyond Precedent," Illustrated Police News, November 6, 1880.

What Lust Will Do.

From the confession of Mary Brown to the murder of her husband, John Brown, by her paramour, Joseph Wade:

When I first went to the gate Mr. Brown was lying with his feet about the middle of the gate and his head towards the buggy, close to the hind wheel. The buggy robe was under him and the blanket over him, so that I could not see his head. After I took the child in and returned Brown was still groaning, as he was when I first come to the gate. I said: "My God, Joe, what have you done?" He said: "Darling, this is what love will do," and threw his arms around my shoulders. He said: "I love every hair of your head better than my own life." Mr. Brown was still groaning, and he (Joe) said: "Shall I hit him?" I said: "No." He said: 'I shall have to finish it now." He added: "I will have to hit him or use my knife." I said: "Oh, my God; no; don't touch him. Let me take him in the house." I had not seen his head and didn't know he was so badly hurt. Wade said: "No, this has got to be finished."

"What Lust Will Do," Illustrated Police News, February 28. 1880.

Read the full story here: The Brown Tragedy.

A Young Fiend.

Maggie Thompson, a pretty eight-year-old girl living on Merchant Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio, mysteriously disappeared on May 9, 1889. She was coming from school, just two blocks away, but she never reached her home. Detectives, police constables, and private citizens searched the neighborhood to no avail. They found no trace of Maggie.

The Cronin Trial.

 

W. S. Forest, of counsel for the defense, cross-examining the expert microscopist Tollman.
Defendants (far left) 1. Beggs, 2. Coughlin, 3. O'Sullivan, 4. Burke, 5. Kunze.

Dr. Patrick Henry Cronin was a prominent Chicago physician, and a member of Clan-na-Gael an American political organization formed to promote Irish independence from British rule. After Dr. Cronin uncovered corruption among the leaders, his naked body was found stuffed in a sewer with icepick wounds to his head. In the 1889 murder trial of five members of Clan-na-Gael, the defense tried to paint Dr. Cronin as, alternately, a violent radical and a British spy. 

Read the full story here: Clan-na-Gael and the Murder of Dr. Cronin.

A Youthful Murderer.

George Wilbur and Michael Kildorf, both 17 years old, were good friends in North Plains, Michigan. On January 28, 1879, they went together into the woods to hunt rabbits. At some point during the hunt, a dispute arose between them. The cause of the disagreement was not disclosed, but it continued to escalate. Kildorf was resting on the root of a tree when Wilbur came up behind him and shot him in the back of the head, killing him instantly. Wilbur took Kildorf’s revolver and went back home.

Later that day, Kildorf’s body was discovered, and the authorities tracked Wilbur to his father’s house. They arrested him and brought him before Esquire Simpson. Wilbur waived examination and was committed to jail.

George Wilbur was from a good family and was “respectably connected.” Michael Kildorf was a stranger in North Plains, living with his aunt, Mrs. Burke.

The public sentiment in North Plains was overwhelmingly in Wilbur’s favor. A correspondent who did not share the “maudlin sympathy for murderers” commented sarcastically:

Now is the time to commence sympathy for poor Wilbur. Oh! he must be in jail! How unpleasant it must be when Kildorf is so comfortable underground, below the frost. Will poor Wilbur have to be tried? He ought not to be, for he must have been insane—poor fellow. Oh, how easy he whipped out that pistol and drove that bullet into the back of Kildorf's bead! He must have been ready at any time—poor fellow. And then if he had missed Kildorf's head how bad he would have felt. I hope he won't have to be tried. Can't we get him out on low bail, and then let him off—it will be so unpleasant for him to stay in jail and then be tried? And then if we had hanging for murder, how bad the poor fellow would feel when they put the rope round his neck. And then if he should be ten or fifteen minutes in dying, when he slipped Kildorf off in about one minute, and so easy. And then to be hung up and not touch the ground! Oh! horrible! Oh, the poor fellow! He will go straight to Heaven, of course.

It does not appear that George Wilbur was ever tried or sentenced for the murder.

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Sources: 

“A Deliberate Young Murderer,” Illustrated Police News, February 15, 1879.

“Minor Telegrams,” PORTLAND DAILY PRESS., January 31, 1879.
“A Youthful Murderer,” Detroit Free Press, January 30, 1879.
“A Youthful Murderer,” The Inter Ocean, January 30, 1879.

A Red Path of Jealousy.

 

When William W. Place’s first wife died, he married his housekeeper, Martha Scovoll. It was a whirlwind courtship and William did not listen to his relatives who thought Martha would bring trouble. Sure enough, before long, Martha’s true nature came out. She had a quick temper and was irrationally jealous of William’s relationship with his young daughter Ida. Martha had violent fits of temper and threatened to kill both William and Ida. On February 8, 1868, she made good on her threats, strangling Ida to death and attacking William with an axe. She was convicted of first-degree murder and was the first woman to be executed in the electric chair. 

Read the full story here: 

The Brooklyn Murderess.

The Norwich Poisoning.

Around February 1878, Charles H. Cobb, City Collector of Norwich, Connecticut, was stricken with a mysterious illness. His doctor diagnosed his condition as lead poisoning from lead water pipes or a lead drinking vessel. He prescribed various tonics without success, and the illness lingered for months. Then, on June 6, Cobb died suddenly and unexpectedly, arousing suspicion.

Cobb’s friends and neighbors believed he was murdered, and they had a ready suspect. Wesley W. Bishop was having an affair with Cobb’s wife, Kate, and they were not very discreet. Bishop had purchased arsenic, which he said he had given to Cobb, and Bishop’s wife had died four months earlier under similar circumstances.

The Fatal Shot.

 

In the wee hours of February 8, 1888, burglars broke into the mansion of Amos J. Snell, one of the wealthiest men in Chicago. They went straight to Snell’s office and opened his safe and a strong box but did not find the fortune they expected. The thieves went upstairs and began gathering silver items.

The noise awaked Snell who came down in his nightshirt, armed with an old muzzle-loading pistol. Hearing the thieves in the parlor, he shouted, “Get out! Get out of here!”  and fired his pistol through the closed parlor door. The thieves responded by firing back through the door. Snell turned to run outside, and the thieves opened the parlor door and fired two more shots, killing Snell. 

The massive manhunt that followed involved the police, the Pinkertons, and many private detectives. The family offered a $50,000 reward for the killer's capture, reported at the time as “the largest amount ever offered for the capture of any human being in the world.”  Despite more than 1,000 arrests and several false confessions, the case remained unsolved until 1910, when a professional thief named James Gillan confessed to the murder on his deathbed. The confession was taken as fact, but there was little evidence that Gillan committed the crime.

Read the full story here: The Snell Murder.

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Pictures from Chicago Daily News, February 9, 1888.